Medicaid expansion opponents tell gruesome tall tales
On the Twitters yesterday some Tea Party trolls were baiting AZ House Minority Leader Chad Campbell, accusing him and other Dems in the Legislature of saying they wouldn’t support the Medicaid expansion unless it “funds abortion”. When asked to substantiate the claim, they cited this article, with no reporter named in the byline, from the [...]
State religion? Why not?
If you worship the concept of “states rights” and revere the 10th Amendment, this proposed resolution in the North Carolina General Assembly/a> should be no problem for you at all. SECTION 1. The North Carolina General Assembly asserts that the Constitution of the United States of America does not prohibit states or their subsidiaries from [...]
Anti-choice politics and rape culture
Like many observers of the Steubenville rape case, I was heartened by the guilty verdict (the disgusting claim by the defense attorneys that the victim was consenting because she had not “affirmatively” said no failed) and dismayed by the insensitivity and outright cruelty some people have shown toward the victim. CNN correspondents Candy Crowley and [...]
If only we could just “pay for it ourselves”
In a stunning turn of events – if by “stunning” you mean “wholly predictable” – a group of GOP Representatives are threatening to hold up sequester negotiations unless the Obama administration rolls back the Affordable Care Act’s mandate to provide contraception coverage in employee health plans. Their excuse, natch, is “religious freedom”. GOP lawmakers reintroduced [...]
Pick a Side Part 2: VAWA
In furtherance of my project to banish the egregious bogosity that is the “both sides do it” false equivalence to the bowels of hell where it belongs: Last Thursday the House of Representatives finally reauthorized the Violence Against Women Act, or VAWA as it’s commonly known. VAWA, which expanded protections to abuse victims and set [...]
More victim blaming by the gun lobby
It’s pretty blatant here. This is nothing more than gun manufacturers tapping into action movie hero fantasies to sell more guns. The woman-uses-gun-to-defend-herself-against-marauder scenario assumes a white woman attacked on the street, or in her home or car, by a villain. She is able to access her gun readily to shoot her attacker. He either [...]
The implicit victim-blaming at the heart of the gun fetish
So there was this cartoon recently: Needless to say, it was gross on a bunch of levels and I didn’t want to give it more exposure. But yesterday some woman named Gayle Trotter, who works at a thing called the Independent Women’s Forum, testified before the Senate. She claimed that guns were essential to women’s [...]
